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Transrapid (MagLev) Test Successful In China: 405
theBunkinator writes "Use your favorite translator (+ unit converter) to read about the first successful beyond 400km/h (~250MPH) test of the MagLev train in China. News Blurp in German at tagesschau.de. The offical Transrapid site is bilingual, with choice of German/English. Pictures & Video, too. Beats the Autobahn any day. Probably beats a plane in many situations as well."
"Magnets: Not just for your fridge anymore."
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
"Beats the Autobahn any day"
But, but Autobahn is a highway... Besides, the Autobahn does carry more people per hour and kilometers than does this train any time soon.
wheres my hoverboard?
Seeing China's current economic condition, it's probably just a repainted 1964 World's Fair monorail.
"Wreaking havoc with harddrives at 250mph!"
or maybe not
nbfn
which is described here. And it's network described here
none Yet.
Passengers can now go 405 kilometers before they're hungry again.
use my suit of armour -> :)
i mean what if i get stuck to the track ?
Please note that you can already travel at 300Kmh using the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, 'High Speed Train'), in France, since since 1980...
Not 400Kmh, but it works very well.
More informations can be found here.
(There is a nice flash map of the french railways).
If this is like every other "high speed" trains, then it can only keep its maximum speed for short periods of time.
I believe it's more related with the environment (i.e. "let's not hit a cow") than anything else. So I wonder if they developed a system to allow a constant high speed (other than "we don't care about cows")?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
I'm missing something ???
The French TGV already drove over 515km/h.
And that was in 1990 !!!
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
possible news in the future *In international news today the worlds fastest maglev train was derailed when someone threw "a really big magnet" on the track, the repulsion of the poles sent the train flying off the track at around 260 km/h *
The cruising speed of a typical commercial jutliner is about 550 mph.
The speed of sound is about 761 mph (sea level, bleah bleah.)
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
If anything this thing will make airtravel therefore easier by getting people to and from the airport faster.
I recently had to go to london from amsterdam and checked out the three different methods. Boat, train (via channel-tunnel) and plane. Plane beat the other by a few hours. Mostly because of the number of transfers(?) and the inevitable waiting time this entails, required in the other two.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Iam expecting to see about 1/2 dozen ppl or so who are going to get on this list and preach that this is the religion of monorails and that LTR is better. It is nice to know that if it is a religion, then at least it has gone someplace.
5 or so years ago this would have been reported as
"Under the guise of a civilian transporter the Chinese goverment demonstrated a potentially terrible military weapon, capable of accelerating several tonnes upto half the speed of sound"
Just think, if Iraq had just done this we'd declare war.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The Transrapid would've cost us about $38 million per kilometer and additional annual costs of $215K. For comparison, ICE train tracks (Inter-City Europe express tracks) cost $16.5 million per km and around $165K annually.
It gets worse. There's a 30km test track in Emden, and the train has never been up to it's supposed max speed of 500 km/h. The distance from the Munich airport to the city center is only about 20km, and the thing needs 5km just to get up to 300 km/h. Planned costs were set at $1.6 billion (with a "B" as in, "bwooaaaahhh!") -- expected costs around 50% more. Planned completion was 2006 and expected 2008-2010.
Munich dodged a bullet, but now faces over a year of public transport hell as the main through-tunnel for all S-Bahns is upgraded to increase capacity from 20 to 30 trains an hour. (All S-Bahn trains pass through this tunnel, resulting in massive delays whenever there's a problem even near the tunnel, which extends some seven stations, 5 in the tunnel and end points.) To make things worse, the video schedule displays along the lines run Windows and crash at least once a week. Luckily, the trains don't.
woof.
A semi-monorail related story. That means only one thing. Please mod down the 1000 idiots that go to snpp and post that stupid song for the 1000th time this year! It was funny the first time, but its beyond a joke
There's often a Simpson-esque rally in the US press whenever another country pulls this sort of thing off. People often ask "Why can't we just covert/reuse existing railways."
The problem becomes one of how you define straight. These tracks need to be really straight for long lengths to get such numbers, and while your typical subway or Amtrak route looks straight, that's only when viewed at lower speeds (under 60MPH). Even then, lots of these routes are shaky. Take it up to over 100 and suddenly, it's not so straight anymore.
Anyone who's taken their car to really high speeds on public roads can usually attest that a straight road at 70 isn't as straight at 120.
How come there aren't any of these in the U.S? I would have thought that U.S being ahead in technology (or atleast money), they would have one of these running somewhere by now. Also,are there any health related problems when riding so fast and so close to electricity and magnetism for extended periods of time?
...has been highly controversial over here. The state-funded Transrapid consortium has developed a high-trech train and then, when asking the German government for a track to deploy it live, suddenly found that actually noone in Germany cared for it.
Germany, being a rather small country, yet with a very high density of population, has a very good and highly accepted high-speed railtrack system. (Japan and France are still far better, but still.) The Transrapid offers very little time benefit per direction, yet requires massive construction work for its tracks. Most people here say - why bother? Why do we have to pay billions of tax Euros for a 30 minute benefit?
The Transrapid consortium has struggled during the last years to find an excuse on where to build its track in Germany and why, and so far, plans are still going back and forth.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
If your goal is just to reduce friction, why not simply float the train on an air cushion, like a hovercraft? It seems like it would eliminate a lot of the complexity.
The air cushion could be fairly efficient compared to military hovercraft, since the ground clearance could be an inch or so, instead of feet. Your track could be prepoured concrete instead of electromagnets.
I'm probably missing something.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
This story implies that the maglev was running at the same speeds it would operate at commercially. There's a big differance between that and the world speed record. To quote TGV themselves from their site
"Running at over 500 km/h (311 mph) with a specially prepared trainset on brand new track is an accomplishment, but one should not expect such speeds to be possible in commercial service anytime soon."
If the maglev speeds are reproducable in a production - ie passenger carrying - environment then this is a major achievement and certainly seems to be what they are aiming for.
This train line is actually pretty darn impressive. I was in Shanghai three weeks ago, and to get from the city to the airport, we took a highway that for much of its length runs parallel to the train "tracks". The train's path is, for at least a good portion of the trip, elevated on huge concrete pillars, thus avoiding cows and other earthbound wildlife. The train itself looks pretty cool, too.
Shanghai, BTW, is a very nice city- at least the areas I saw. I got the impression there is, relative to many other Chinese cities, a lot of money there.
...but China is fast becoming the next Asian economic powerhouse. Many people living in Hong Kong now go shopping for consumer electronics, mobile phones, computers etc. in mainland China. New cities are already larger and produce more goods than HK.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
This is precisely what a country with a GNIPC (gross national income per capita) of ~750$ (see WorldBank) needs these days.
The Raven
At least it wasn't:
404: Maglev not found
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Sorry about previous post. Hit "return" when reaching for "shift."
/. article.
I myself have discovered (by living in São Paulo and having a girlfriend in Rio de Janeiro) that traveling by bus is already better for me than traveling by plane.
First, it's much more comfortable. The buses have seats that are much bigger and much farther apart (front-to-back) than airplanes. I am not a big person (173 cm and about 65kg, or about 5'8" and around 145 lbs) and I feel cramped in commercial airliners. Imagine tall and/or heavy people!
Besides that, on a bus, the seats really recline (not the almost imperceptible 5 "recline" of an airplane seat), making it possible to sleep, which I now cannot do on airplanes (I used to be able to, but they are forever cramming more and more seats in, and thus limiting more and more the space each passenger has, and they have now surpassed my comfort limit). Additionally, there is no limitation on when you can recline the seat (there is no takeoff and landing) or on what kind of electronic devices you can use (it's nice to be able to use my cell phone to make or receive calls while en route) or when you can use them (again, no takeoff and landing).
Also, you don't have to pass through really invasive security procedures to get on a bus. I also discovered something surprising: even though the bus travels much slower than a plane, I don't lose much time taking a bus. In fact, it's much better. Let me explain.
If I take a plane, I have to get to the airport first. And I have to be there at least an hour before the flight (it would be 2 hours if I were in the US, but I am fortunate to live in a free country... if anyone thinks this is a troll, I'll be happy to discuss it with you. But basically, I enjoy many freedoms I couldn't dream of having in the US). After standing in a line to check in, I have to answer stupid questions, show ID, and check my luggage. Then I have some time to kill before the plane leaves. I usually get some kind of soft drink in the departure lounge (waiting area). Oh yeh... I have to show ID and my ticket to get in there. With all the noise and hurrying people around, it is all but impossible to make any kind of use of this waiting time by, say, reading. Then they call us to board. I then have to get in another line, present my ticket, and go to the plane. I then find my seat and sit down. I can try to read during this time, but again, there are people all around making a lot of noise and hurrying and arranging their stuff. Then the plane takes off. I can now try to read, but within a few minutes, the flight attendants come around with drinks. In the case of the São Paulo to Rio flight, the whole flight lasts only about 40-60 minutes (depending on direction, weather conditions, and air traffic at the destination). In the case of longer flights, the attendants come around several times to offer drinks and/or food.
After the plane lands, it taxis to the gate. This can add another 5-15 minutes, depending on traffic. Then we are released into the terminal, which usually involves another wait while people block the corridor to take down the 74 bags they just couldn't check and had to bring on board. The one time I saw a flight attendant enforce the limit on the number of bags a couple could carry on, I literally applauded, and did I ever get dirty looks from the couple.
Next we all go to baggage claim, which can take anywhere from seconds to forever. After that, either I meet my ride or go to car rental to get a car.
In the end, I don't really save any time taking a plane instead of a bus, even though the flight part of the journey by plane takes 40-60 minutes and a bus trip takes 5-6 hours. Taking the bus has the added advantage that I can arrive at the bus station without a reservation, buy a ticket for the next bus, go down and wait a few minutes (not 45 like in the airport, plus buses are rarely late, while airplanes always seem to be) before getting on the bus. I can than either sleep (not possible in the airplane due to comfort and time constraints) or actually do some work or just relaxing reading. If I had a laptop, I could do work too. Also, buses have much more flexible hours. In the Rio-São Paulo example, the last plane (and you've gotta reserve that several days in advance) leaves around 10:00 PM. There are buses leaving with relatively high frequency until about 1:30 AM, and there are others that leave at even later hours, though not as frequently.
Now imagine a train, which can offer all the advantages of buses, plus it doesn't get affected by traffic and can travel at 400 kph (about 250 mph). Add in that it can be much more energy-efficient than a plane, has an even lower risk of accidents, and (Steven Seagal movies aside) an even lower risk of hijacking than a bus, since it has very limited possibilities in terms of alternate routes (i.e., it can only go where there are tracks) and basically cannot be used as a weapon (except possibly against a vehicle on a road at a train crossing or another train). Basically, there's no comparison. A maglev train would blow away an airplane for everything except trans-oceanic travel. And best of all, it would probably be much cheaper than an airplane flight. I started taking buses because my girlfriend and I couldn't really afford to be flying back and forth every weekend, and the bus is a much, much cheaper option. I expect a maglev train ticket would be more expensive than a bus ticket, but less expensive than a plane ticket. I traveled extensively in Europe by train, and the prices were quite reasonable, even for the TGV (Train de Grande Vitesse (or sumfin' like that), which just means "high-speed train" in French) between some Swiss city (Geneva?) and Paris. And if you think about it from a business point of view, the marginal cost of adding space for more passengers (by adding more cars, not by cramming the passengers in like sardines like the frickin' airlines insist on doing) is very low. So if there is less demand, you send less cars. If there is more, you add some. So the "full flight" problem is reduced without large additional costs... wow.
If I were a stockholder in a major airline, I would be even more worried now than before thinking about high-speed maglev trains... as a consumer of mass transport, I am definitely more happy than before thinking about these things because of the
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
The test site (which can be seen on the Transrapid site is quite close to the Dutch borders. As my dad works as a journalist in that area, he had to do a story on it once. Which included a few rounds in the train on the 8-shaped test track in Lathen, Germany. Due to some luck I normally never encounter I had the oppurtunity to go with him and thus also do a few rounds on the track. And I must say, it is nothing less than impressive. We didn't go faster than about 340 km/h, but doing that a few meters above the ground in a very silent train was an unforgetable experience. For short-long-distance (100-500 km.) this is an ideal solution. Clean, fast and just ultra-slick. I hope this system will now finally get some more attention, because it deserves it and is a very good replacement for short-distance flying and long-distance car driving. Hurray for Transrapid!
As posted before, the transrapid is very controversial discussed here in germany.
Some companies of the transrapid consortium (thyssenkrupp, former a steel producing heavy-industry company,siemens and others.) are lobbying for more money because the transrapid has not yet fullfilled the expectations. The more consverative parties are tradionally pro-transrapid, and the social democrats/greens are against it. (the greens mostly because of the environment issues).
Initially there should be a track between hamburg and berlin, but environment issues (there are some nature reserves "in the way") led to a cancel of this project. Because many are thinking of the transrapid project as a "prestige object" for german high-tech industry, they are still promoting other tracks. One is the munich munich airport track, but it is also looked at the "Ruhrgebiet" (german's big industrial area with > 16 mio. people) for possible transrapid ways.
So for now there is only the test-track in Emsland (near the netherlands) and there was, not well-known, a test-track in Braunschweig.
kids throwing gas cylinders at local trams so its only a matter of time if the track goes under a highway bridge...
Well, I don't know about germany, but here in america we certanly driver closer then 170 meters! Perhaps 170 decimeters :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Fine, almost honor pre-calculus.
1. There are no single lange Autobahns, at least not in Germany. (They might have em in Poland, but as far as I remember, there are no designated lanes anyways and, secondly, that's not called the Autobahn.)
2. The average car does not transport four people, but around 1.3.
3. Serious (empirical!) studies give us better numbers for the number of car throughput: A Swiss study mentions up to 115 000 cars / day, 4800 per hour. According to guidelines used in planning of roads, the acceptable throughput for a 2x2-lane Autobahn is 20.700 to 70.000 cars/day, so it's far less than the figure mentioned. (Source) That's data for both directions.
4. Assuming 40.000 cars/day (in accordance with the guidelines), we end up with 2166 persons per hour.
Besides, the drunks need the time to finish their 6 beers off before they get home to the wife and kids.
In the post-9/11 world, any country considering any kind of mass transport must ask what kind of target opportunity it represents? I think, unfortunately, that this will be much easier to attack than an airplane at 35,000 feet. Every foot of rail will have to be alarmed, patrolled, and inspected. With more passenger capacity than an Airbus A380, how long will the security checkpoints take? A full day?
While it may now be technologically practical, it remains impractical for political reasons.
8 minutes for 30km is an average of 225km/h. It would seem that the train would need more than half the distance for acceleration/deceleration.
An average speed like that is fairly easy to achieve with rail-bound trains.
What would you trust more, a well developped and well researched almost 200 year old technology (the first steam train ran in 1804), or a new, extremely complex technology that has yet to carry it's first passenger???
One suburban train packed with people equates with a 27 lane highway as for people throughtpout is concerned !!!
In this precise case, you may be right because they would need several trains to achieve top carrying capacity, and these trains are fscking expensive !
We slashdot readers like maglev for its Y2K fantasy sound, but in reality... top spedds are achieved on real iron rails (France, Japan, Germany). The TGV was almost 400 kmh 20 years ago and is now over 515. And not needing a nuke plant for each wagon.
This is more of a Shelbyville idea, anyway...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm glad the Chinese are working on this valuable project instead of frittering away funds on something frivolous. This and their moon shot, which is an even better use of that country's current resources.
The Transrapid was ready to market in 1980. Nine-teen-eighty, I say. Endless debates and 22 years later it finally gets implemented. Of course not in germany. At least this time it's the chinese and not the americans that get it on with german tech. :-)
That been said, it shure is an engineers wet dream and a beaty in means of transportation. I'd love to see this baby ready for use throughout central europe. Cars are outdated. Germans, for instance, spend 4.5 billion man-hours in traffic-jams per year! It's really time we got puplic transport to be the way to travel.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I wonder how much [people's] money does it cost to build a mile of maglev vs TGV vs autobahn. I think it would be
maglev = $$$$$
TGV = $$$
autobahn = $$
Mainland China is building a short maglev run to show off. I doubt even a rich country can afford a luxury of using a maglev for intercity transportation. If you just need to deliver passengers from a city to an airport and back, you don't need a 400 km/h train.
ps. Pun intended, chinese currency is called "people's money"
For similar reasons, the maglev here in Shanghai is probably going to turn out to be failure.
The current maglev track runs from Pudong airport to meet a subway station in the suburbs of the city. Thus, to use the maglev train, travellers will have to fight their way through an extremely congested public transit system. It's no fun, and I can't imagine anyone doing that with luggage (picture a subway train completely packed with people so there really isn't room to fit a single other person). Sure, Shanghai now has a the begins of a city center check in system, but that will not be in place for the majority of flights for a long time.
A bigger problem is the cost of ticket will make the train so expensive to ride that no-one will want to use it. They haven't yet announced the ticket price yet, but it's rumoured to be around 50 RMB (just over $6). That's not cheap. Airport buses are reasonably convenient, if not fast, and cost 16 RMB. If there's more than one traveller, sharing a taxi to the airport begins to look very attractive (downtown to airport in a taxi is around 150-200 RMB).
It's a cool technology, but this project isn't a sensible use of it. It's done purely for the prestige.
On a more smiling note, you could see a bit of german-french difference in attitude when you look at their original designs for their high speed trains. Or more exactly to their reactions on the other's creation.
:-)
The germans considered the french trains to be awfully fragile. The french thought the german one to be a heavy, unelegant brute
Currently, the french ones are starting to look a bit more solid and the german ones lighter and more elegant...
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
An advanced rail system like this might be slightly ahead of its time for China if the marketplace alone were determining when some company would build it.
It's kind of sad, though, that here in the United States we probably won't see anything like this for many more years.
It's strange, though. The Peoples Republic of China is a mixture of a market-driven and command-driven economies.
Likewise in the United States, where heavy government subsidies in the 1950's built up the interstate highway system.
Now, of course, the automobile dominates passenger traffic and the trucking industry dominates freight and our potentially efficient rail infrastructure is a government-subsidized crumbling ruin that neither the auto, trucking or oil industry is interested in seeing re-emerge.
But railroads will re-emerge as the most efficient means of transportation for people and freight. Computer controls for regulating rail traffic will succeed sooner than they will for automobile and truck traffic.
All it will take for the re-emergence of rail in the United States is some painful increases in the price of oil. Then we can go to Europe, Japan and now China to learn the technology that we've been neglecting.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Also, the geography of the US does not favor trains. The map is heavily populated on the coasts with little population in between. It is simply easier and faster to do most long distance travel in the US by air. Even in special regions like California that may lend themselves to intrastate rail travel, it is unclear if this will be cheaper than air travel. You can get some incredible bargains for LA-San Fran/San Jose flights, and rail operators of the upcoming line between those two regions will be hard pressed to beat these low fares.
"Beats the Autobahn any day." - Hm, not really. If you have a car that can drive that fast and there aren't many cars on the Autobahn, Autobahn beats Transrapid. Remember: In general, there's no speed limit on German Autobahns. There are exceptions and these exceptions are getting more and more (green party, idiots, politicians), but in general there is no speed limit. So buy a Porsche 962 with street license, for example and have fun!
As everyone starts worrying about portable surface-to-air (MANPAD) terrorist attacks, here we have another transportation system that is *much* easier to sabotage. It doesn't take a sophisticated weapon system here to cause a tragedy, just a well placed obstacle or a small amount of explosive.
The Chinese may be able to afford a guard every 3 eters of track (although making the guard unbribable is a problem), but much of the rest of the world cannot.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Well, I don't know about germany, but here in america we certanly driver closer then 170 meters! Perhaps 170 decimeters :P
Ever learn the two-second rule for driving? The trick is, you're supposed to always be at least two seconds behind the car in front of you, three or four seconds if the roads are slippery or it's raining or dark (or all three).
You measure this by using bridges, signs, etc. as benchmarks -- wait until the car in front of you has passed the landmark, count "one-onethousand two-onethousand", and only then should you reach the same landmark. If you pass it beforehand, you're too close.
So suppose you're driving 120 kph (the usual speed limit on the Autobahn, if there is one defined). 120 kph ~= 33 m/s. So by the two-second rule, you'd have to be at least 67m away from the car in front of you.
Suppose you're doing a more typical speed on the Autobahn (even when there's a speed limit, it usually is roundly ignored). Most people drive around 140 kph (though you usually are getting run over by Mercedes and BMWs doing 200). That's a minimum distance of about 78m, assuming it's a bright sunny day with dry roads.
If it's raining, you should double that; near or below freezing, at least double that again; low visibility, double that once more. IOW if it's raining, freezing and foggy, you probably shouldn't be on the road at all. ;-)
Seriously, if you follow the two-second rule and keep in mind that you're supposed to double it in some circumstances, you're never rear-end anyone, and probably never get rear-ended either (since the person behind you *also* has more warning as a result).
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Health problems: No. The main RF hazard is radiation powerful and high-frequency enough to heat your tissue. The magnetic field has yet to be demonstrated harmful, though many continue to try. (I used to work with MRI, which involved a 1.5 Tesla superconducting primary magnet.)
;-), and so on. Sadly, it was 9/11 that gave trains a boost, when airports became even more aggravating. The train's time will come. ("We have the technology. We can rebuild [it]."
Why not here: Lobbyists. On one hand you have the money-losing Amtrak, on the other the money-losing but politically influential airlines. More important than airlines perhaps are those who really fear roads: the automobile industry. That industry includes not just auto mfrs, but also tire mfrs, gasoline suppliers and vendors, and so on. Rail service has a much smaller umbrella.
America is stalled on rail because for years roads were emphasized, and subsidized. Los Angeles, where I grew up, is the classic example of car dependency and mediocre mass transit. People say that areas such as these are "not suited to mass transit" but forget that the layout of the city was determined by cars. Thus cars lead to more cars. In balncing one form of transportation against another, the hidden cost of pollution and auto fatalities and such are rarely assessed. (Yes, people die on trains, too.)
In the Northeast Corridor, where I now live, trains should totally overcome the shuttle, which offers almost no time advantage for a downtown DC to downtown NYC traveler. The problem facing Amtrak, which is only one of many users of the lines, was to get funds to upgrade and electrify the tracks. Congress resisted, citing their operating losses and thus confusing annual deficits with capital investment. Over $2 billion was required to introduce Acela service, which still can only travel at a fraction of its normal speed over much of the route because of antiquated curves and grading.
I don't endorse Amtrak, but see that its challenges are not fairly apprised. being subject to political control, for example, it must maintain unprofitable routes, while not being able to fully exploit the profitable ones, or develop new prospects. Even if Amtrak is successfully denounced, if anything that strengthens the case for rail by implying unexploited possibilities are there.
I love rail service; you get a first-class (big) seat, can get up and walk around, can arrive 30 seconds before the train rolls, don't have a safety lecture about the motions to go through before you die anyway
Maglev tracks are supposed to be cheaper to build per unit length than interstate highway/autobahn.
(That is, in a production environment rather than just a 10-mile or so test track.)
I'd rather have slower trains with better coverage/low prices than an insanely expensive fast train that doesn't run anywhere near where I live.
High-speed trains? Don't expect my support until the NJ Transit Raritan Valley Line is electrified and goes direct into NYC. (A much easier project than building a maglev or upgrading tracks to high-speed capability).
I have a train line 10 minutes from my house. It's great, despite being a non-direct diesel. The Northeast Corridor is faster and would be nice, but the NEC is "fast enough" without having super-expensive upgrades being done.
Also, for long distances, trains just don't compete economically in the US. Amtrak (the only long-distance provider) has prices that are on average equal to or greater than air travel. In a number of areas you can compare Amtrak prices directly to local commuter rail - On the Northeast Corridor in New Jersey, NJT does New Brunswick, NJ to NYC in only 10-20 minutes more than Amtrak. NJT's round-trip price is 1/4 that of Amtrak's one-way.
The problem is that Amtrak has to use their profitable lines (NEC, etc.) to subsidize the much less profitable (in fact, overall money-losing) Midwestern lines.
I think the solution is to give up on rail where it won't work - For long runs in the Midwest, air has won and trains can't compete. For selected areas (Northeast Corridor, i.e. DCNYCBoston), form smaller companies to operate those lines. They can probably offer the service at much lower prices then, which will provide a large gain in ridership for those lines.
Unfortunately, thanks to Amtrak's prohibitive cost, it's cheaper to hire a limo service to go from central Jersey to Washington, DC (Yes, people do this. Apparently a significant portion of the business of many of the area's limo services are now for DC runs). It's faster to drive than take the airplane, and while the train is the fastest, it isn't worth the insane cost. Train travel could easily beat air travel in the Northeast, but it has to be reduced in price so that it can compete first.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
How come there aren't any of these in the U.S? I would have thought that U.S being ahead in technology (or atleast money), they would have one of these running somewhere by now.
I wrote about this in a previous article (see the final paragraph). One of the problems (in addition to those already listed by others) is that the US Government wasn't willing to put up any research dollars to fund development of the MagLev train -- the idea for which was actually created at MIT (there's even an old videotape of the minature prototype experiment somewhere). Other governments were more than willing to fund the research even though it was going to benefit private companies. Needless to say, the combination of government money and private companies that look beyond the next fiscal reporting period to determine the allocation of their R&D budgets resulted in the US quickly being left in the dust.
GMD
watch this
Sorry, I forgot to include this link in my previous post.
GMD
watch this
MagLev train will be obsolete as soon as my teleportation device hits the market.
*johnson
You really need to learn more about the MagLev train and what advantages it would offer over "200 year old technology" before you post (and someone mods you as Insightful???). Here's a very brief primer on MagLev that will hopefully help you realize the importance of MagLev. You should do a google search and find out more.
What would you trust more, a well developped and well researched almost 200 year old technology (the first steam train ran in 1804 [schoolnet.co.uk]), or a new, extremely complex technology that has yet to carry it's first passenger???
Who the hell modded this as Insightful? Sheesh!
GMD
watch this
There was an article recently in Popular Science (IIRC) that talked about how ineffecient airline travel is. For the majority of people flying in the U.S., door-to-door speeds average around 99mph. This could be vastly improved with less security (you can't fly a train into something) wait times, fewer/quicker transfers, and closer drop-offs.
I fly from Phoenix to B'ham regularly. It is a 3.5 hour flight. Sounds good, right? Well, it's at least 1 more hour in the terminal here in Pheonix, plus 30 minutes driving, plus 30-45 minutes until I get my bags in B'Ham, and another 20 mins until I reach my destination. That's now 6 hours for a 3.5 hour flight, assuming non-stop. If there is a stop, add at least 1 hour to that.
And I'm flying from a major hub. If I lived in Flagstaff, add at least 3 hours to that approximately same distance, and you can see that trains don't have to do 500 mph to be competitive.
Plus, trains are roomier....
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AFAIK, some of the the DLR in London are MagLev and have been for many years....
So MagLev carried it's first paying public customer ages ago.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
I rode a Japanese maglev demo track in Japan, around 1985. The system worked very well, and I've been a believer ever since. It glides with an unspeakable smoothness. If you didn't look out the window, you wouldn't even know that you're in motion. (Well, except during speed changes -- during departure "takeoff", you're pinned to your seat like a jetline taking off, but without the jet's vibrations.)
To declare the maglev dead on the basis of the costs and untested-ness of the first designs is ridiculous. The first commercial jet airplanes were expensive and guzzled fuel -- and the industrial infrastructure wasn't yet there. Many years later, with successive refinements in technology, and gearing up of supporting industries, modern jetliners have pushed down the costs of travel and transport to incredible new lows.
When the Havilland Comet and the Boeing 707's first came they were immediately popular, but had their share of detractors. It took successive generations of planes, notably the popular 727's and the 747's to really show off the potential of jetliners.
And then there's the fleets of 737's that let's us now freely move about the country on low-cost airlines.
Granted, train tracks are fixed and can not be "rerouted" to quickly adapt to changing markets. But where there are markets with enough current air/car traffic (Eastern sea-corridor being the obvious one; So/No. California and Las Vegas being a likely candidate), the maglev is a potential optimization.
I for one would love to use the Maglev to go from L.A. to S.F. Trains are likely to have higher up-time and lowered cycle time compared to airplanes, and would more likely have last-minute "walk on" convenience (even in today's security-minded environment).
Let's just be glad the Chinese are willing to take the first-mover disadvantages on new technology problems and costs (they clearly want the first mover advantage on prestige and willing to pay for that). From their experience, only improved systems can result!
As has been said numerous times below, conventional trains Do Not run at anything like 500 Kmh. To quote TGV themselves about the high speed testing they do...
"It is however forseeable that future TGV designs could run in revenue service at speeds of 360 km/h (224 mph)... "on the condition that it be economically viable, and that a braking system be developped to bypass wheel-rail contact," says Roger Gérin, joint TGV production director."
TGV do not run at even 400 Kmh in production. The Maglev system will do that and the tests they have just run are part of the work up to running those speeds commercially.
IT FAIL YOU!
No, you need the Japanese who have some REALLY cool-looking trains.
And you can set your watch by their departures.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Too trivial for terrorists to attack. Just blow up, or throw something on the track.
Part of the deal is that the chinese get to build 1/2 the cars. They are also doing the track. What this amounts to, is that the germans have just given away thei technology to a country who has no real recognition of patent rights. China is building up a manufacturing base that will overwhelm the rest of the world.
As to the suitability of this track, it will carry passengers and light-medium weight cargo at ~400-450 KPH. Once they start manufacturing it for their country, they will have a fast, lowest cost in energy way to transport large amounts of ppl and cargo from one side of china to the other. Nice way to move a the economy or the military.
No matter what technology you use, maglev, wheeled, or whatever, the faster it goes, the more space it will need to keep humans away from the shock-wave.
So now, let's look at land use policies: Where the hell are they going to put this thing?
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
In europe, the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) made more than 500km/h in France, maybe 10 years ago... So what's the point of having a 400km/h train even if it's maglev?
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Given the safety record of some notable, Chinese technology, combined with their well known regard for human life, I'll not be accelerated to 250 mph by anything made in China, thank you.
More like 230 km/h.
Is the Florida Unified Ballistic Railway (FUBAR).
:)
It borrows its propulsion system from Jules Verne. Let's just say it takes the idea of a "bullet" train quite literally.
Note the "artist's conception" pic, with the sign that says "WARNING: EXTREME DANGER - STAY BACK 1000 METERS."
It should be noted that the Japanese MLX01 Maglev has reached speeds of 550km/h, faster than the TGV in ideal mode and the maglev of this article. Sure it is an experimental train, but still.
Big Deal?
Cars are outdated.
Based on what?
Germans, for instance, spend 4.5 billion man-hours in traffic-jams per year! It's really time we got puplic transport to be the way to travel.
And you'd like to see Germans spending 4.5 billion man-hours waiting for trains, instead? That's progress!
I build prototype Maglev systems for a living.
It would be a good guess that China will ultimately go with a permanent magnet based system rather than an electromagnetically levitated one because the material that the strongest permanent magnets are made from, Neodynium Iron Boron, is found mostly in China, and they have extensive domestic magnet foundries. Until the big NdFeB patents run out, their global market is limited, so they might use a permanent magnet based system to subsidize that industy until the patents expire. The big question to me is whether they will ultimately use an EDM (repulsive)or EMS (attractive) system.
Check out Magplane.com, in development of an EDM system for China, and MagneMotion.com (where I work)
I seem to recall riding a maglev at disneyland... wasnt 400kmph or anything jazzy like that, but the technology isnt new.
So then all they have to worry about is cows on stilts.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Feeding the troll...
Are you for real?
Er, well, yes...
Having passed the advanced drivers test in the UK I can assure you that hardly anybody drives the two second rule in the UK and now I am in the states I know nobody does it here. The UK drives at about one second gaps and the Us less than that.
In some areas of the US, yes, that's true. But not all. And the question was, how far apart do cars drive from one another? Well, they are supposed to drive two seconds apart. What they really do is of course another issue entirely.
Yes, I stick to the two-second rule anyway. (It's called defensive driving.)
The problem is at motor/highway speed two seconds leaves enough of a gap for some dofus to pull into. There goes you're breaking distance and you're wonderful two second rule. Fall back and the next dofus does the same. Repeat ad nauseum until you get a clue that nobody else respects you're breaking distance.
Yes, people do jump in front of me -- but they also jump in front of you when you only leave one second (or less!). The point is, why not leave yourself and them enough space to do it safely?
Additionally, if you follow the two-second rule, once they jump in front of you, they will already be farther away from you than otherwise -- so you don't have to brake (just let off the gas a little). And if you don't have to brake, neither do the people behind you, and behind them, and so on (the good old accordion effect).
As an added bonus, you'll run far less risk of rear-ending someone -- and the driver who rear-ends another car is almost always at fault and has to pay the damages. So not only do you save risk in terms of safety, you save risk financially as well.
The key to safe driving is to be courteous, don't hurry and keep your distance (the two-second rule is to guide you in that). If you take the attitude that everyone else is automatically a doofus, and that it's your right to tailgate and drive over the speed limit, then you're clearly driving aggressively and contributing to the problem.
As an aside, I just *love* it when I see people getting out of their wrecked cars (where they had been speeding and tailgating) after rear-ending or spinning out or whatever, and protesting to the cops "I'm a really safe driver! All my friends say so!"
On crowded roads the two second rule is not possible to implement.
The hell it is. All you have to do is back off.
If traffic is only moving at 30 kph, like in a traffic jam, then the two-second rule says you should be 16m away from the next car -- a little more than two car lengths. That's not really that much. If you're only moving 10 kph, then it's about 5m. BFD.
Instead you pay far more attention to what's going on around you constantly have the escape route planned.
And guess what? The two-second rule gives you a built-in escape route automatically and buys you some split-seconds in which to make a decision when things get critical. That can mean the difference between a close call and a totalled car (and injuries).
It also helps to have the largest newest vehicle you can afford.
Ah. I see. Peace through superior firepower...yes, let's all get bigger cars! That'll solve everything!
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
How fast can a TGV go?
Typically, top speed in commercial service is 300 km/h (186 mph). Under special test conditions a TGV trainset has reached 515.3 km/h (320 mph). Some speed restrictions due to the line or the train may exist, but weather (such as dense fog) does not limit speeds.
Is travelling by TGV safe?
Yes, very safe. The high speeds have resulted in no fatalities two decades of operations. You could probably say riding a TGV is safer than taking the airplane.
This lookls like a really good track record, and it tells you precisely how fast it goes on average. They also talked about the envoirmental impact as well...pretty interesting.
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
I have driven in Germany many times, and can attest to fellow North Americans that the Germans take their driving far more seriously. They obey the speed limits right down to the km/hr.,
Uh, what part of Germany was that? I *rarely* see Germans pay much attention to the speed limit, unless of course they know there's a radar camera nearby (in which case they slow down for maybe a few seconds).
I've lived in Germany now for almost ten years (Hannover-Hamburg area) and speeding (and trying to run red lights) seems to be the national sport.
where they exist (secondary and city roads and many parts of the Autobahn), and on the stretches of Autobahn that are unregulated, they obey rules very carefully about slower traffic keeping to the right, proper signaling, passing etc.
That I agree with -- indeed it's often a shock to be back in the States and drive there, where passing on the right is pretty much normal (even if it's technically illegal).
OTOH it's not that big a deal, since the speed differential between any given car and the average speed is *far* lower (cars in the States drive about 70 +/- 10 mph; in Germany it's about 85 +/- 30 mph because of varying speed limits by type of vehicle) so passing on the right isn't that big a deal.
North American driving looks very sloppy in comparison. The sections of the Autobahn that are unregulated are (by comparison to here) beautifully engineered, built and maintained (flat, smooth, properly banked turns, etc.).
Yup, it never ceases to amaze me how perfectly built the Autobahnen are. But OTOH think about it this way: with the high speeds, you *have* to have a perfect surface -- otherwise the car would go flying at the first pothole (or take out the whole suspension).
Interesting curiosities: I was told that in Germany, if you come up behind another car and want him to move over, you can be charged for flashing your lights at him and that you can also be successfully sued for giving another driver the middle finger gesture.
Yes, both are true. Honking or flashing your lights at someone to get them to pull over is called "Nötigung" (basically means "forcing") and is punishable by law. Tailgating is also considered a mild form of Nötigung. In both cases you're encouraged to take down the license plate and turn them in (though I don't know if the plaintiff gets anything for doing it).
However, the converse is also true. If you're in the left lane and only doing 80 kph, others can sue you for blocking the road.
Using the finger is an offense in Germany on or off the road, actually, as is insulting someone (calling someone an a**hole is subject to fines). This results in rather interesting twists of conversation -- Germans have gotten rather good at verbally assaulting and insulting people without ever actually calling them anything...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Going thru the chanel-tunnel via an eurostar you could notice the difference ... going to the UK from europe : on the continent you are above 300kmh, in the tunel the speed decrease mainly for safety reasons, but arriving a few miles inlands GB and suddently you are dog slow !
...
...
When France & GB started the Eurostart project both aggreed to design high-speed (TGV-like) lines. After a while, britton did not thought it was an idea and said that 80km/h was enough ! NB: the realspeed on UK ground for the eurostart is most of the time nearer 30km/h to 80km/h !!!
Now, because they fear the euro zone they seem to be interrested into boosting the london zone. And they've just realized that having a fast train was also a "must have" ! But this will cost lots and lots of pounds because it could not be an easy task
All we've got now is a plain waste of time & money !
Sad story
Bad Doggie is really bad and a normal lobbyists.n .ht ml
the figure is 22.8 Billion dollars. Well that sound high, until you start putting things into perspective.
In chicago, they are talking about creating a third major airport or expanding O'Hare. The O'hare expansion is the prefered route for low costs. How much? 12-18 Billions dollars on fist estimates via the airlines (
http://www.rppi.org/chicagoairportprivatizatio
).
Actually final value will most likely be 1.5 to 2x this amount. Roughly, it costs about the same to build a maglev from chicago to NY as to expand O'Hare.
Here in Colorado, it cost us 4 billions to build DIA about 1 decade ago.
Our T-REX project to widen I-25 about 15 miles and add LTR alongside is ~ 1 Billion.
The nice thing about maglev is that it gives in between choice that offers much higher speeds than car/truck/bus/current rail. Now as to those who talk about replacing current rail with this, you are also mistaken. The current rail is slow, but carries all the heavy cargo across USA. This includes coal, chemicals, liquids, etc. Few of these things must be delivered post-haste. They can go via slow, cheap shipment. Maglev is actually capable of carrying light to medium size cargo far cheaper than plane and actually quicker in certain segments.
It is time for US to start looking past lobbyists and thinking long-term about the country.
Of course, given that the overhead of air travel (travel to/from the airport, security, luggage, etc.) is largely independent of distance, on most shorter routes, at 200-250mph, trains are already faster for city-to-city travel. And trains tend not to fly into buildings, no matter how much terrorists insist.
As you say, speed itself isn't everything when comparing the TGV to Transrapid. So you might like to know that the Transrapid 07 is quieter than a TGV at the same speed, and the train itself uses less energy because there's no friction with the track. What is more, it accellerates and decellerates much faster than the TGV, making it easier for the Transrapid maintain a high average speed, not just top speed, even with lots of stopping and starting.
Why would you bother with building a totally new infrastructure along the already crowded coast of California and build a MagLev track from L.A.-S.F. when you can improve on the existing railroad tracks, achieve fast speeds and allow for competitive times with airplanes. High-speed rail is faster than flying on the east coast with a similar distance. Why isn't it feasible on the west coast?
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
Currently China is the fastest growing economy in the world. All helped in part by foreign investement and by becoming the world's manufacturing centre.
Although is hard to verify but at least the chinese like to think that.
how many other countries, some developed, some developing, have high-speed rail or are developing high-speed rail while the US lays back and sticks with environmentally unfriendly transit (SUVs for everything from a drive down the block to the 7Eleven for a bottle of milk to single passenger driving to work).
Someday we in the US will be finally embarrassed into the modern world and take up better means of transport. Perhaps when Afghanistan has high-speed rail the US will follow suite.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I live in Germany and heard a lot about the transrapid (the first project after the test train here in Germany):
A guy working for the consortium visited the building site when a chinese guy came and said: "we're going to build the station here and the rails will go there" pointing to some suburban buildings where lived about 100.000 people. The German guy asked "So, we'll have to dig a tunnel?"
"No no, " answered he chinese guy, "there are livin people we just resettled from the Yangtse river. We'll relocate them again and demolish all these buildings. They are two years old, allready."
It's just different how they build a transrapid if they want it.
1) Some of the best beer that I've ever had in my life (local breweries are very popular there, so there is much variety) - I discovered that I have a particular affinity for the "Dunkeles Hefe Weizen", a dark wheat beer that they serve only in 1/2 litre steins (don't mix this with the Autobahn, though) and which must, by law IIRC, be made only with 4 natural ingredients and contain no preservatives
2) Excellent (but expensive) food
3) Topless beaches ^-^ need I say more?
Sigs are bad for your health.
That the idea of launching nuclear waste towards Sun is very simplistic. It is not considered as a solution because to put it in orbit you'll have to use massive rockets. Forget energy balance and the loss suffered in the whole, but the fact is that the rockets themselves produce quite a lot of harmful pollutants. Also, in case of an accident, there is risk of contaminating populous areas.
I wonder, do you think your sh!t smells better than the lowly plebes too?
Hm, no. I don't.
The two-second rule is a blanket concept, just like a speed limit is a blanket concept.
Ah, I see -- blanket concepts are evil. Let's get rid of both, then!
Unlike yourself, most human beings do not drive like a robot, and instead tend to take driving conditions into consideration.
Interesting. You claim to know a lot about my driving habits already. Are you psychic?
The two-second rule is all about giving yourself an extra safety net in the case of poor brakes or driver distraction, and can be an excellent rule to follow on single-lane streets with no medians, especially streets with parked cars.[...]
Everything you have written assumes that I suggest people use the two-second rule to the exclusion of all else. I never suggested anything of the kind. It is a rule of thumb that is easy to understand and use on-the-fly, and easy to explain to someone who's only had the usual drivers' training. And along with other good practices like the ones you list (look several cars ahead, check your mirrors every few seconds, etc. etc. etc.), by using the two-second rule, an inexperienced or intermediate driver can greatly reduce his/her risk of being in an accident. What's so terrible about that?
Cripes, someone points out a helpful way of driving safer, and gets jumped on. *shakesheadindisbelief*
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Pretty far off-topic, I know, but late it's late in the thread: Germany has several other 'features' that I would highly recommend to any visitor:
1) Some of the best beer that I've ever had in my life (local breweries are very popular there, so there is much variety) - I discovered that I have a particular affinity for the "Dunkeles Hefe Weizen", a dark wheat beer that they serve only in 1/2 litre steins (don't mix this with the Autobahn, though) and which must, by law IIRC, be made only with 4 natural ingredients and contain no preservatives
2) Excellent (but expensive) food
3) Topless beaches ^-^ need I say more?
I would say that, in the context of driver safety, points 1 and 3 are very much doubtful as to helping safety, especially in combination. Driving after a few Dunkelbiere and goggling topless beaches along the way... ;-)
Though I agree that they are selling points. ;-))
Point 2, well, that's debatable...I'd say I have had much better food in, say, Oslo or Amsterdam or Utrecht. But maybe I'm hitting all the wrong restaurants in Germany. *sigh*
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
My house -> DCA -> (Delta Shuttle) -> LGA -> Manhattan = 1:50 / $100.
My house -> Union Station -> (Amtrak Acela Express) -> Penn station = 3:20 / $170.
For me, it's a no-brainer: I take the plane, unless there's weather. The train is a nice backup because it doesn't get stuck as badly in weather and it's obviously roomier. But currently, planes are faster than trains, even for short trips.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I recall riding something that I was told was a maglev between the Capitol and one of the congressional office buildings. very slow and noisy and stuff but interesting anyhow.
The survival rate of a train wreck (even at 400km/hr) is likely to be much higher than that of a plane nose-diving at 700mph.
If the train system has security checkpoints similar to (or, preferably, more reasonable than) airport security, then it would be hard to get a bomb onto the train.
That leaves the option of bombing part of the rail. But if you did that, the train would probably come to a stop (I'd assume there'd be computer system to detect major malfunctions in the track... like being BOMBED). So, Mr. Terrorist would have to wait until the train was about to cross his bomb and *then* hit the trigger. They're unlikely to have technology to detect a train and detonate a bomb -- they used box cutters, people. BOX CUTTERS.
"Mother, should I run for President? Mother, should I trust the government?"
more like 403: access denied
... is dangerous to people with pacemakers or floppy disks.
The switches are bendy metal.
If it grinds to a stop on a switch, will the bendy metal break?
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Amen. I once had the opportunity to get a ride in Transrapid on its testing-track in Emsland. The speed wasn't the main thing that made me speechless. It was the the silence within the train. I mean, we were travelling at 420 kph and it wasn't any louder than on an average ICE/TGV. And note, the train didn't have any sound-dampening at that time as it was a testing vehicle.
And you should also note that a maglev track only requires two square meters per meter of track, compared to 20 m^2 or more for conventional tracks.
Typical "burnup" for nuclear fuel in commercial pressurized-water reactors (PWRs) is something on the order of 50,000 megawatt-DAYS per ton. A megawatt-day is 86.4 gigajoules. You could produce the energy to throw the fuel into orbit in 4 days; escape velocity would take 8 days. And that's assuming you don't do anything intelligent like reprocessing the fuel so you only have to dispose of the actual fission products (you can keep the leftover uranium and plutonium and throw them right back into the reactor); if you reprocessed, you would only need to get rid of 10% or less of the total fuel mass per cycle. A load of fuel lasts a couple of years. All in all, you are talking about 1% of the energy output of the fuel to send it all away from Earth after you're done.
This is not to say that it would be smart to do that if you could, or that the engineering required would be feasible even if it was smart. But nothing in the energetics prevents you from doing so.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I was also very pessimistic. At 50,000 megawatt-days per ton over 730 days burn time (roughly 68 megawatts average) and 4 megawatt-days to achieve orbit, the fuel would produce the energy to loft itself in about an hour and a half. It would produce the energy to put itself onto an escape trajectory in about three hours.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your
obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night
for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and
traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
-- Henry David Thoreau
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